The Wheels are Falling Off
Prop 50 wins — and the gerrymandering war continues. By Luke Pickrell
California’s Proposition 50 is the latest move in an all-out gerrymandering war between Democrats and Republicans. The fight began in Texas, where Republicans redrew their House map to flip five Democratic seats. Republican-controlled state legislatures in Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio have also redrawn their states’ maps, and Florida and Indiana want to do the same. Democratic Party legislatures in New York, Illinois, and Maryland say they will join the war.
Gerrymandering is also a central issue in Louisiana v. Callais, a major Supreme Court case with a ruling expected right before the 2026 midterms. After the 2020 census, Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature gerrymandered the congressional map to underrepresent black voters, who make up about one-third of the state’s population. The map — which had one majority-black district out of six — was challenged in court for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and Louisiana was ordered to redraw the map and include a second majority-black district. In 2024, the redrawn map was challenged for violating the 14th and 15th Amendments, and the case was taken up by SCOTUS. As I argue elsewhere, the conflict is essentially between two cases of racial gerrymandering, but with different desired outcomes: the fair or unfair representation of black voters.
The gerrymandering war is a crisis with few parallels in American history, claims a recent New York Times article. “The wheels are coming off the car right now,” says Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School. “There’s a sense in which the system is rapidly spiraling downward, and there’s no end in sight.” One possible future is a “chaotic and near-constant process, with state lawmakers redrawing districts with the onset of every midterm election.”
If things are falling apart, it’s important to understand that disorder is no substitute for levelheaded political analysis and strategy. That’s what we have to provide.
Democratic Socialists of America does, in fact, have the correct analysis. DSA’s Workers Deserve More Program calls for proportional representation, stating that “our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution that establishes civil, political, and democratic rights for all, is based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature, and ends the role of money in politics.” YDSA’s Program also calls for PR, arguing that we should “create a democratic republic with a unicameral people’s assembly elected by universal, equal, and direct suffrage, alongside democratic management of workplaces.”
But as any DSA member knows, there’s a substantial difference between paper and practice. It’s talking the talk versus walking the walk — or, in the case of California DSA, taking two steps backward.
As the gerrymandering doom spiral picks up speed, DSA should seize the opportunity to advocate for proportional representation and a popular assembly elected by universal and equal suffrage to write a new constitution. Where the seeds of that assembly lie — be it in the ideas of George Van Cleve, the work of DSA’s Marxist Unity Group (MUG), or a combination of everything — remains to be seen. I expect it will take a little bit of everything, mixed with a good deal of mass mobilization, protest, and conflict. The history of Reconstruction and the civil rights movement has a lot to offer in that regard.
If there’s a winner in the gerrymandering war, it’s Gavin Newsom. I expect him and the Democratic party to wring the “defend democracy” position for all the political capital it’s worth. If there are losers… well, all of us are losers.